TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” website has a Broadsheet section written by David Murray. Last night, Mr Murray actually attacked a Texas blogger who had the temerity to correct Ms Palin over her inaccurate claim that environmentalists were “limiting deforestation” in Alaska. Mr Murray adds to the spice of this late night musing by actually suggesting that this show isn’t political as he says, “once or twice per episode, Sarah does make a quick aside with some political content.”

Yes, that’s right, Mr Murray. Once or twice an episode Sarah Palin makes a dig at Michelle Obama or the President or the feds or some other evil liberal target. The rest of the time she’s busy rehabbing her image with narratives about “working hard” and “not quitting” and being a “tough” female. Why, in one episode she ran around looking like Rambo for the Ronnnie Reagan vote. Then she takes her petty attacks at her critics, like suggesting that “refudiate” was a typing error because the “d and the f are right next to each other”. A pause while we realize that if she had used the d, she would have made an even worse mess of the word. Image rehab, fighting critics and sending political messages all wrapped up in the neat flagship of a “reality” TV show.

At any rate, I wouldn’t say that was political either if I were working for a network that was engaging in paid political advertising for a very divisive candidate and receiving tax credits from the state of Alaska (for the star’s salary if nothing else), because you see, that would be propaganda for profit at the tax payers’ expense and on public airwaves and that would be uncool on many fronts.

And that wouldn’t be good for TLC to admit.

Only TLC gave Sarah Palin Executive Producer credit and control over editing (per her own tweets), so this is her message and everyone in America knows that Palin politicizes everything she touches. So TLC has to defend her from suggestions that she is making political attacks and we all know how Palin loves to be defended, so this is another cozy relationship of money, power and elite media congloms working to sell Palin, Inc to America. Nice work, TLC.

Let’s not forget that TLC “disinvited” media critic Jennifer Pozner from TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” podcast because they claimed she was “too political” for the show. In the past, Jennifer Pozner has criticized “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” as nothing more than a paid political commercial wherein the politician is getting paid by the network. Too political, you say? Gee, I’m flummoxed.

Now, on to the specifics of this particular fight.

Malia Litman, author of “Rebuttal to the Rogue”, who blogs on “Malia Litman’s blog” was watching last week’s episode of “Sarah Palin runs for President” (oops, I mean, “Sarah Palin’s America”…no, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”) and she became offended that Sarah Palin claimed conservationists were somehow stopping logging and deforestation of Alaska. God forbid we should limit deforestation of our resources. However, let’s not get bogged down in that fight.

This is pure vintage Palin. She can make an enemy out of thin air. Because, see, no one is stopping loggers in Alaska. No evil environmentalists are stopping “progress” in Alaska. This is another Palin v No One fight, where the viewer gets to plug in the evil guy (who is always a liberal and usually in the White House).

Watch here. The rant against no one starts at 8:22:

Then Malia Litman does due diligence and corrects Palin:
“In the same episode, Palin criticized environmentalists for their opposition to logging and deforestation. Although nothing about Obama was mentioned by Palin, the viewer certainly assumed that Palin was critical of the Obama administration for any efforts to limit deforestation in Alaska. In this instance it was Palin’s total absence of acknowledgement of the attempt by the Obama administration to allow the expansion of logging in Alaska, that was so offensive. Just this year the Obama administration has come under harsh criticism for its approval of the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The Obama administration has approved the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The 17-million acre forest is the largest stand of continuous temperate rain forest in the U.S. and contains a lot of old-growth trees. This first sale will come after seven miles of roads are built for the 381-acre clear-cut. Either Palin didn’t know or purposefully failed to mention that the Obama administration had worked to limit the laws regulating the limited removal of trees in Alaska. The Obama administration allowed the cutting down of trees, in spite of the knowledge that deforestation now accounts for nearly ¼ of global CO2 emissions in the world.”

Do we all know whom she means? This is the woman who can’t stop making petty jabs at Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative, after all. Yes, if you live in America, you’re aware of whom Palin thinks of as her mortal enemy; he who stole her crown. Or as they call him on her heavily moderated Facebook page, the “usurper” President. He whom Palin can not, will not, stop criticizing at every turn until the Russian newspaper Pravda called her out as a traitor to her country. But Mr Murray wants us to pretend that we don’t have any idea whom she means. I mean, we can’t prove she meant that! She never said it. So there. That get’s TLC off the hook for Palin’s misinformation.

Wait, see how that worked? That’s called moving the goal post. Because you see, Palin did misinform her viewers and one would like to think that as former Governor she knows what goes on with logging and deforestation laws in her state. But perhaps I give her too much credit. I hear she gets her information from Fox, so maybe we should give her the benefit of the doubt.

….Here’s the excerpt, with the weaker assumption in bolded text:
…” Palin criticized environmentalists for their opposition to logging and deforestation. Although nothing about Obama was mentioned by Palin, the viewer certainly assumed that Palin was critical of the Obama administration for any efforts to limit deforestation in Alaska. In this instance it was Palin’s total absence of acknowledgement (sic) of the attempt by the Obama administration to allow the expansion of logging in Alaska, that was so offensive.”

Now, Palin has of course been critical of Barack Obama in the past; that’s not the part of that statement that seems (to me) to be unreasonable. It’s that, even though Sarah said nothing of Obama, the viewer would immediately think “she’s talking trash about Obama!” And if she’s not talking about Obama (which we really don’t have very much reason to believe she is, her not mentioning him at all), then why would it be offensive not to bring up his track record on logging in Alaska? She didn’t mention a lot of people’s track records. Is that offensive? I don’t think it is…

No, see, what’s so offensive is that Ms Palin attacks outward over false issues and implies that enemies like evil liberal environmentalists are out to get hard-working loggers, while Mr Murray, Malia and I know this isn’t true. That is the issue. Let’s stop moving goal posts, shall we?

I wonder why Mr Murray left that part out of his quote from Malia’s blog? I wonder why Mr Murray didn’t even have the courtesy to link to Malia’s blog so people could make up their own minds about what she meant. Maybe he didn’t want people to see the truth. After all, that would look like TLC was funding baseless attacks on the Left and we all know they aren’t doing that. They certainly aren’t funding a misinformation campaign or a political ad.

Now if only the rest of America would kindly swallow this lump of coal so TLC could collect it’s monies and move on before things get too dicey. Oh, and maybe TLC should supply us with the information about exactly how much money they get from the film tax credits and incentives if they qualify for them. We already know that the people of Alaska are paying 44% of Sarah Palin’s salary per the film incentive. After all, TLC is using public airwaves and they’re using tax-payer money, so this is our business.

Yes, it’s true. After a rough two years of Palinitis stained by winning Politifacts’ Lie of Year award among other ignoble distinctions, it appears that even Republicans are mournfully unclenching their stubborn fists from around Palin’s star bursts. A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted December 17-19 and it turns out that support for Ms Palin is nose-diving among Republicans. She has, in fact, lost 18% of her support since 2008 among Republicans. Sigh. Our country may be spared a civil war in 2012. Finally, the Republicans are doing something for America!

“Among liberal Democrats, 85 percent say they want to see the party re-nominate Obama in 2012,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Among moderate Democrats, his support is almost that high.”

In the battle for the GOP presidential nomination, the survey suggests Palin may have some work to do if she throws her hat in the ring. Only 49 percent of Republicans say that they are likely to support Sen. John McCain’s running mate in 2008 for the Republican nomination in 2012.

“That’s a huge 18-point drop since December of 2008, when two-thirds of GOPers said they were likely to support Palin. It also puts her well behind potential rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, and a bit behind Newt Gingrich as well,” adds Holland.”

Republicans’ dreams that Ronnie had come back to them in a skirt are dying a tedious, painful death, during which we are all being subjected to Palin’s media blitz until even the sight of her makes us weary. Palin refused to do the work necessary to be taken seriously and cashed in on her fame to make money and in doing so, she mismanaged her star power if she has political ambitions.

Oh, that’s right. I left out that OTHER part of the poll. President Obama enjoys a comfy 85% support from liberal Democrats and 78% of Democrats questioned in the poll want the President to run in 2012. Only 19% would like another nominee to replace the President.

Oh, dear. I’m glad I’m not anywhere near Wasilla right now. I’m afraid I can hear tin cans hitting a refrigerator from my kitchen window. And here the Conservatives for Palin were working so hard on their talking points about how Ms Palin had held elected office longer than President Obama (if you discounted his Presidency and included the City Council for Palin), because we all know how well the talking point of “executive experience” went over in 2008, why not try it again, even after the President has been…well…like the President for two years. Yes, this makes sense.

If you have any Republican friends with a Palin 2012 bumper sticker on their car, remember to be kind today. Dreams of the faithful die hard and Palin was hailed as the God chosen candidate for the evangelical right, so this has to hurt. I just can’t imagine how God can be so wrong, can you?

However, just because Republicans don’t like her doesn’t mean she can’t utilize the Tea Party to her advantage in the primaries and Ms Palin is known for working best with strong opposition from within her own Party, so there may be some hope to cling to here for the die hard Palin fans. I do hope someone assists them in their talking points, though, as re-litigating 2008 is not bound to be effective with any but the Kool-Aid drinkers.

Happy New Year, America. Looks like you might have managed to “take your country back” after all.

Sometimes our life experiences come in handy. This is one of those times.

Who can forget Ms Palin’s endless mocking of President Obama for using a teleprompter and her cutesy way of referring to her hand notes (her three ideas for America were apparently hard enough to recall that they had to be written down for her) as the “poor man’s teleprompter”. And on every forum where some brave fool dares to write about Palin in a less than salivating manner, regardless of the actual issue at hand, a Palin fan comes to mock teleprompters.

At a Tea Party speech, Ms Palin mocked the President by saying, “This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any one king or queen of a Tea Party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” You must fill in the requisite sneer for full effect. The implication is that the President is a moron for using a teleprompter. This is made clear by the Right’s gleeful picking up of this meme and running with it at every turn, especially when they have nothing relevant over which to criticize the President.

Before we get any further into this story, I need to preface it by referring to my own work experience in film and TV. Some of that experience was behind an anchor’s desk, so I share Obama’s great sin in having used a teleprompter though I don’t recall turning into a Commie directly after it. Perhaps it’s too soon to tell.

So anyway, last week while watching “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, I could have sworn I saw a teleprompter on her home studio camera, but I didn’t care enough to do a screen grab. After all, there are so many lies to deconstruct and so little time. But then last night, as I was watching the latest episode (which I must confess is now a fun distraction from her tweets), she was showing us her studio in the house she built next door to her home on Lake Lucille. Sarah and Todd were making a show of how it was just the two of them putting on her little show. And while she made cute and Todd told her her hair was above his pay grade, I saw the evil socialist machine staring me down, clear as day. So clear that I could read the logo. Yes, a teleprompter.

Close up of Sarah Palin's teleprompter

Who makes Ms Palin’s teleprompter? Autoscript. The number one selling teleprompter. The gold standard in teleprompters. The elite, if you will, of teleprompters. The farthest cry from the “poor man’s teleprompter” as you can get. You know, the one that the evil lame stream media use at no less than NBC studios:
“Autoscript is currently facilitating NBC with studio and portable on-camera teleprompter systems with high-bright LED backlit monitors, as well as WinPlus-NX news-prompter software, during the network’s coverage of the Vancouver Winter Games….

Autoscript also designs all of the different software packages that drive its teleprompter systems. Autoscript teleprompting software features multi-tasking functions, including the ability to simultaneously prompt and edit, run multiple scripts, change the run-order, mix fonts, and change the font size. Autoscript’s WinPlus-NX news-prompter software provides seamless integration to all major newsroom-computer systems.

WinPlus NX software can operate in a number of modes, depending on the design of the newsroom-computer system it’s being used with. Autoscript’s software also works with a variety of control devices, enabling prompter operators to control the system using a desktop control, foot control, wireless hand control, or Autoscript’s unique Voice-Plus voice-activated software to pace the script. WinPlus NX software can also send the prompted text to a Closed Caption encoder.”

Now what in heaven’s name can a paid contributor who is only on the air for a scant few minutes and who’s been given the questions in advance need a teleprompter for? Yes, Ms Palin requires that all questions be given in advance. And of course, the teleprompter kinda gives that away because it would be impossible to load it up with a script if Ms Palin didn’t know what she was going to be asked in advance. Um, well, here’s what happens when Sarah Palin doesn’t have a teleprompter. Notice how she can’t remember her three ideas for America so she has to check her hand:

Or perhaps because one is attempting to avoid another embarrassing moment like the Couric interview or the Gibson interview, during which Ms Palin froze and the flop sweat broke out on her upper lip as she stammered for a non-answer. A teleprompter covers the sputtering non-answer and allows Ms Palin to converse about topics she knows little about.

Palin flop sweat:

And for those who don’t know, when using a teleprompter there are all kinds of neat tricks to help the talent: you can have the names of Iraqi officials phonetically spelled out, you can have smiley faces put in when you’re supposed to be happy, you can have text bolded to place emphasis on it. In fact, there are so many tricks that you can almost read the script for the first time on the air if you choose. If you’re good at it, that is. Although most professionals will at least do a cursory glance to get the flow of the piece before taking to the air and those with a work ethic will want to understand the topics they’re speaking to their audience about.

This might be a good time to take a walk down memory lane to the 2008 RNC convention.

“ST. PAUL—Interesting bit of myth-making, mistaken reporting or both. Did Sarah Palin’s TelePrompTer malfunction? A very little bit, but not much.

RedState is reporting that Sarah Palin’s TelePrompTer broke last night, scrolling “significantly from where Governor Palin was in the speech.” Politico’s Jonathan Martin disputes the report. “Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech,” Martin writes. “But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the Teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems.””

Myth making indeed. That is a talent Ms Palin has developed to a finely honed skill. Like the myth that little poor Ms Palin, the hockey mama, doesn’t use a teleprompter. She’s too “real” for that.

As for the RNC teleprompter myth, little hiccups are normal — especially because on the older systems, whoever is running prompter had to anticipate the speaker’s rhythm, so if the speaker changes or pauses, the prompter operator might need a second or two to catch up or slow down. I’ve also been responsible for running a teleprompter; and I can attest that things don’t always go smoothly. Software can malfunction or the computer can just pause for a second. But of course this happens to everyone who uses it, not just Ms Palin – and so far, no one else has been hailed as a mythical warrior for managing to ride it out.

This is one reason why it helps if the person is somewhat familiar with their script, and why it helps if the person can talk freely about the subject at hand. The teleprompter can help a speaker who’s under a lot of pressure remember words, key phrases, and jog their memory or it can be used as a complete crutch when you don’t know your script. It’s simply a tool, and a ridiculous criticism to hurl at someone. Only people who aren’t in the business would even buy this as a criticism. But of course, that’s Ms Palin’s audience.

Not only does this put a wee dent in Ms Palin’s constant mocking of Obama for using a teleprompter, but it should also be noted that the myth she sold on her show of just she and Todd doing her little show is simply not possible. Here’s the deal (and probably one reason why she didn’t want Joe McGinness to see over that fence): It takes at least three professionals to run the small set-up they have: A camera operator (who will also adjust lights even if the lights are pre-set as they are in most studios), a prompter op, and someone in the control room (like a producer) to watch the monitors for problems, monitor the sound, and make sure the talent doesn’t go off script.

And this doesn’t cover the professional make up artist and hair stylist, or the wardrobe stylist. Or the production assistants. And it is very obvious that Palin is getting her hair and make up done, at the very least. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s simply another thing she’s not being authentic about. Even the ex First Dude can’t do all of those jobs simultaneously, assuming he could magically learn all there is to learn about running a camera and loading the prompter and getting it to flow with the speech patterns of the speaker (lord help whoever is running hers).

Frankly I couldn’t care less if she uses a teleprompter. It’s a good tool for on air talent and politicians and there’s nothing wrong with it. What I have a problem with is that once again, Ms Palin is selling a myth that simply isn’t true and in the process she mercilessly mocks a good man, who has every reason to use a teleprompter because he’s a bit too busy running the country to memorize speeches, although I deeply suspect he spends more actual time writing and editing his speeches than does Palin. And goodness knows, Palin has free time on her hands now since she quit her job as governor to pursue her TV career.

The unveiling of this lie goes to the content of her character. And once again, Ms Palin flops when it comes to accuracy, integrity and honesty.

Do You Love Your Freedoms? Sarah Palin Has Citizen Kicked Out for T-Shirt

Sarah Palin had a woman escorted out of her book signing today in Alaska. The woman’s crime was the t-shirt she wore which read “worst governor ever”. Ms Palin is often complaining about her own first amendment rights (translated to mean the Press can not criticize her or fact-check her without trampling on her first amendment rights) but seems to think less highly of other Americans’ rights.

Sarah Palin appeared at the Costco Warehouse in South Anchorage Saturday morning, December 18, 2010, to sign her recently-released book “America by Heart.” The Anchorage Daily News reported:

“Security kicked out at least two people — a woman with a “Worst Governor Ever” shirt, and a blogger critical of Palin, who claimed Todd recognized him and security escorted him out.

The store was prepared to give out paper wrist bands to 1,000 customers, assuring the first 500 they would see Palin. The next 500 had no guarantee, but not nearly that many people showed up.”

This isn’t the first time dissenters have been escorted out of a Palin event. Last year during her book signing in Alaska, two Alaskans were escorted out. Speaking of them, one of them is blogger Gryphen of Immoral Minority, the same blogger referred to by the ADN. Gryphen tweeted today that he was also escorted out of Ms Palin’s book signing:

It’s hard to imagine a leader who can’t handle reading a t-shirt that is not supportive of her. Oh, wait, former President Bush also had problems with t-shirts. And we all know how much he valued our right to dissent.

If Ms Palin is really going to run for President, one hopes she grows thicker skin and has someone explain the first amendment to her because in this case, she represents the government a lot more than any of these citizens do. And were she to occupy a public office again, it would be frowned upon for her to have citizens escorted out of her proximity for daring to criticize her. Were we to apply Ms Palin’s logic to President Obama, then he should have Ms Palin escorted out of any event he attends due to her incessant, inaccurate and unseemly attacks upon him.

One of more absurd historical comparisons ever made is of Sarah Palin and Abraham Lincoln. Yet absurd as it is, some conservatives have actually made this claim.

It could be countered that anyone who believes Sarah Palin will believe anything and there is something to be said for this. But Palin also thinks she is somehow another Ronald Reagan, and of course, Reagan and Lincoln could not be more different. Such comparisons become easier, admittedly, when you don’t know anything about either one.

Just consider the rhetoric surrounding the Lincoln comparison. As the Bellingham Herald of Washington writes, while “Some may cringe at that idea” that “some may think it would be the greatest thing since Abraham Lincoln.”

Sarah Palin, savior of the Union?

Isn’t this the woman whose husband had a more than passing familiarity with the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) – a secessionist group?

Gail Fenumiai, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, tells ABC News that…Palin’s husband Todd was a member of the AIP from October 1995 through July 2002, except for a few months in 2000.

Palin herself denies membership but there are those who remember her attending the 1994 AIP convention. You have to wonder, since rather than scolding them for wanting to vote on whether to be part of the Union or not, she praised them in an address:

I sure don’t remember Lincoln praising the Confederate secessionists. No, I’m pretty sure he crushed them. I also don’t remember the secessionists supporting Lincoln for president. In fact, his election was their cue to secede. Yet the AIP supported Palin’s run for city council, as noted by Sarah Jones yesterday. She insists she was a Republican all along. That can only label her the Manchurian Candidate Republicans are always going on about. I guess they would know.

It’s an almost criminal comparison. Yet one conservative blogger wrote back in 2008 in almost rapturous prose that “if there is such a thing as reincarnation, something tells me that President Lincoln would be most pleased to see Sarah Palin being nominated for VP!”

It is difficult to conclude that Lincoln finding any words of praise for her and her husband as secessionists. Pleased? Not by a long shot. He fought to preserve the union, not tear it apart.

She seems to have only a passing familiarity with Lincoln the man, let alone his beliefs. She portrays him as a radical Evangelical fundamentalist like herself, but there is nothing in his writings to suggest this is true.

Famously (or perhaps infamously) she claimed the United States was fighting a holy war against terrorists (which to Sarah Palin appears to be more than just terrorists but Islam itself), and Charles Gibson of ABC news confronted her with the quote:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

Here’s where things get uncomfortably squirmy for Sarah Palin:

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

Of course, that’s not true, and no amount of playing with Lincoln verbiage can make it true. Lincoln never talked about embarking on a holy war against the Confederacy. He did talk about preserving the Union. He had some harsh words for the south, and more than that, he had cannons, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.

Palin supporters have tried to argue that Palin did manage to capture the essence of what Lincoln said but you won’t find “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God” anywhere in Lincoln’s writings, nor his speeches. You can dig as deep as you want but you won’t find any evidence that Lincoln thought holy wars were a good idea.

It’s not even clear he believed in God as Sarah Palin believes in God. It is true, as historian James M. McPherson writes that the King James Bible “offered him maxims for life as well as a model for the poetic prose that characterized the best of his later writings” but Thomas Jefferson was able to admire Jesus’ precepts without believing in Jesus the God. Admiration is not belief.

I have searched in vain the collected works of Abraham Lincoln for even a single instance of the word “Jesus” or “Ten Commandments” and found only one reference to the “Holy Spirit” – that in the Proclamation for Thanksgiving modern fundamentalists like to use to portray him as one of their kind of evangelicals. Palin can barely breathe without uttering all these words. As Lincoln well knew, “our fathers” brought forth this nation – not God.

Author Stephen Mansfield, in one of the most patently ridiculous comparisons ever made, wants us to believe Palin is like Lincoln because she stacked wood at a young age. He appeared on Hannity’s show in October to say so, and to draw other parallels between the two, including her “frontier upbringing.”

I wasn’t aware Wasilla was a frontier town; it’s the fourth largest city in Alaska, which might not be saying much by Lower 48-standards but it’s part of the Anchorage metropolitan area – which had an estimated population of 364,701 in 2008 – more people than live in my city.

Lincoln was born in a log cabin. On a real frontier. And stacking wood? Lots of kids stack wood but apparently in Alaska it’s some kind of holy undertaking. My little boy has stacked wood. He’s six years old. I haven’t compared him to Abraham Lincoln yet; I haven’t compared the circumstances of their lives. It would be ridiculous to do so, as Mansfield well knows. But he’s eulogizing, not writing a scholarly treatment. That’s why he was being interviewed on FOX News and not a legitimate news channel.

In 1832, Lincoln ran for State Legislature and won. He didn’t quit halfway through his term. In 1836, 1838, and 1840, he ran and won again. He didn’t quit any of those times either. That’s eight years of political office. He served through every day of it.

Sarah Palin quit her governor’s job half-way through.

Lincoln actually retired from politics in 1841 to work as a lawyer, rather than quitting halfway through a term he had been elected to serve by people who counted on him to represent their interests to the best of their ability, rather than to worry for his own pocketbook, which was never as full as Sarah Palin’s.

In 1846, Lincoln ran for Congress and won. He served both years of his term – again not quitting halfway through.

When he ran, he was accused by his opponent of not being a member of a church. Palin’s taunts of Obama are eerily similar. How would she have treated Lincoln had she been alive in 1846? Given the evidence of her rhetoric it’s impossible to believe she would not have roundly condemned him as an atheist.

Lincoln opposed the Mexican War of 1846. Unlike Sarah Palin, he wasn’t anxious to attack everybody, let alone declare it a holy war.

In 1854, Lincoln ran for the legislature again and won. Lincoln resigned that position so that he could stand for U.S. senator – to better oppose the evil of slavery and to preserve the Union. Not, like Grifterella, to line his pockets with speaking engagements, reality shows, and books.

Lincoln even debated Stephen Douglas, and unlike Sarah Palin, he knew what he was talking about. And as James McPherson writes, “In retrospect Lincoln was the real winner of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.” Only in Republican wet dreams did Palin win her debate with Joe Biden. Half the time, she couldn’t even be bothered to address the issues.

Lincoln ran for president, and won. Palin ran for governor. She won. And quit.

Sarah Palin says that unfair treatment of her was her reason for resigning as governor. Few Presidents (until Barack Obama) have put up with the abuse Abraham Lincoln endured as President. And he had to fight a war to preserve the Union at the same time. He had opposition not only from outside his party, but from within his party. But he did not quit. He soldiered on and he ran for re-election in 1864.

Palin announced she would not be running for re-election but then she couldn’t even be bothered to finish out her first term.

With regards to secession, with regards to the idea that a minority have the right to do as they please, Lincoln wrote in 1861, “The central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose.” Secession, he said, “is the essence of anarchy.”

Hard to find anywhere in the public record that Sarah Palin agrees with this. Her husband was, after all, a secessionist, and she did praise the Alaskan secessionist movement as a welcome ingredient to Alaska politics.

And Lincoln was eloquent, nearly a poet. Read his Gettysburg Address. Sarah Palin could not write that if she labored a hundred years at the task. She hasn’t even demonstrated a proficiency in the English language.

It is difficult, indeed, all but impossible, to find a single point of comparison between the two. And Sarah Palin will always be a quitter; Abraham Lincoln had no quit in him. It took a bullet in the head to get him out of office.

Ms Palin has spent years avoiding the “lame stream media” (ironically of which she is a part), but recently she’s started spreading her wings, albeit to softball media such as her appearance this morning on “Good Morning America”. During her interview with GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts, Ms Palin responded to criticisms regarding her rather dismal current poll numbers were she to run against President Obama in 2012. Ms Palin’s response put to bed notions that she isn’t running as she extolled the virtues of “debating ideas” in competitive primaries.

Anyone who is in doubt about Ms Palin running for President had best grab the smelling salts. She is and it’s uncertain if the GOP can stop her without alienating her Tea Party evangelical base.

Here’s a clip from the interview:

From ABC’s website: When asked about her plans for 2010, Ms Palin replied, “It’s a prayerful consideration because, obviously, the sacrifices that have to be made in order to put yourself forward in the name of public service is, it’s brutal.”

If Ms Palin were taking an interview with a hard-hitting news journalist, she might have been asked at this point about her decision to quit on her vow to Alaskans to serve them as a public servant for four years and if perhaps she just hadn’t prayed enough before taking that job, since she quit claiming that she was being brutalized with ethics complaints by citizens — the majority of whom were Republicans, contrary to her claims.

While Ms Palin’s references to prayer may not seem odd in this country, if we take a look under the hood there are causes for alarm. Ms Palin is a Dominionist Christian, a sect whose goal is to transform America into a theocratic state resembling fascism in many ways. Ms Palin has made numerous references to her belief that the constitution is based upon the bible and that our laws are also based on the bible. She seems to still be laboring under this misinformation, perhaps because it is her belief and no fact will alter her belief. This should set that alarm bell a clankin’.

Furthermore, while running for mayor of Wasilla, Ms Palin’s Dominionist leanings opened the door further to her fruitful relationship with the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist movement, which originated during her tenure on the City Council. The AIP worked on her behalf to get her elected.

“Chryson boasted that he and his allies urged Palin to focus her campaign on slashing character-based attacks. For instance, Chryson advised Palin to paint Stein as a sexist who had told her “to just sit there and look pretty” while she served on Wasilla’s City Council. Though Palin never made this accusation, her 1996 campaign for mayor was the most negative Wasilla residents had ever witnessed.

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control — the two hobgoblins of the AIP — mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as “the Christian candidate,” a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish.”

(John Stein, her mayoral opponent, claimed,) “This same group [Stoll and Chryson] also [publicly] challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name,” Stein bitterly recalled. “So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, ‘Well, you could have forged that.'””

Gosh that sounds like familiar campaigning tactics from the woman who has suggested that it is reasonable to ask for President Obama’s birth certificate, even though said birth certificate has been available online and has been verified by authorities on numerous occasions. It’s hard to sell this kind of campaigning as anything other than appealing to the worst in people, and ginning up hate and division based upon religion, ethnicity, and any other charge of doubt Ms Palin can lob at her stunned opponents.

This was just the beginning of Ms Palin’s tight relationship with the AIP, whose sole purpose is for Alaska to secede from the union. The AIP also has ties with the theocratic US Constitution Party. The Constitution Party has adopted the ideas of a militant form of Christian Dominionism known as Dominion Theology. The Constitution Party platform reads, “It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations.”

“The AIP has placed the candidate of the U.S. Constitution Party on the Presidential ballot in Alaska in the 2008 race. Let’s be clear, the U.S. Constitution Party would impose a form of theocratic neofascism in the United States. And I am not a person who tosses the term fascism around lightly.”

The AIP called Ms Palin an example of their successful infiltration into the Republican Party. In 2006, Dexter Clark, vice chairman of the Alaska Independence party, said:

“Our current Governor, the one we were hoping would get elected, did get elected…There’s a lot of talk of her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town — that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along — she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.”

It should be noted that unlike her husband Todd Palin, Ms Palin was never registered as an AIP member according to Alaskan voter registration records. However, Dexter Clark’s claims of Palin being a successful infiltrator of the Republican Party bears some credence due to the open door policy Ms Palin had for leaders of the AIP while mayor and governor, going so far as attempting to appoint a member of the AIP to a city position while mayor, only to be shot down. Ms Palin also made changes to the state constitution that coincidentally fulfilled part of the AIP agenda.

“During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.””

Indeed, one of the many ethics complaints filed against Ms Palin related to her refusal to live in the Governor’s mansion and yet still charging the Alaskan citizens a per diem for food and expenses while living in her home in Wasilla and commuting to the state Legislature in Juneau (or not: buttons reading “Where’s Sarah?” began popping up around this time, reflecting her consistent pattern of not being around in Juneau). While Ms Palin claimed that she wanted to be near her family (whom usually move to the governor’s mansion with the governor), Palin did endorse and may have been implementing Chryson’s initiative to move the state Legislature from Juneau to Wasilla. At any rate, their initiative was unsuccessful.

The AIP also has numerous ties with the KKK, white supremacist groups classified as hate groups, and militia movements across the country. They are closely aligned with evangelical Dominionists as well, such as Christian Exodus, which advocates creating an all white homeland. Chryson also wrongly claimed that the Civil War was not about slavery but about states’ rights. Chryson was known to accuse Democratic leaders (such as Ms Palin’s mayoral opponent) of being “socialists” over issues of public education and city planning. That’s not just Right, it’s far, far fringy Right.

When Ms Palin was running for Governor of Alaska, not only did she appoint previous AIP member and then Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair, but also her church flew in a witch doctor from Kenya to bless her. For these reasons, when Ms Palin refers to prayer, it raises questions that Americans need answered if indeed she’s running for President. In fact, even were Ms Palin to bow out of the 2012 elections, her determination throw gasoline on any political match she sniffs should be reason enough for the main stream media to begin asking some important questions about Ms Palin’s agenda, her associations, her church, and her disconcerting and inaccurate beliefs about America and the Constitution.

However, it doesn’t appear America will be spared a Palin candidacy. When asked about her poor poll numbers, Ms Palin came out punching like a 2012 candidate. “A poll number like that, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that doesn’t look really pretty today,’ but a primary is months and months in the process, and there are thankfully many debates,” she said. “And if I were to participate in that contested primary — you know, it — I would be in it to win it.”

It would be most interesting to see Ms Palin debate any of the other Republican candidates. Ms Palin has always held the notion that getting elected is a popularity contest rather than a knowledge contest and she was proven correct in this assessment in Alaska. She also successfully implemented (with the help of the John Birch Society and the AIP) campaigns of such vicious negativity and misinformation that her opponents were often left stunned as she cheerily gave non-answers in debates and yet sailed right past them to get elected.

Fox News will be handling several of the primary debates for the Republicans, which may assist elevating Ms Palin’s brand of populism and create a disadvantage for her opponents, none of whom enjoy the same level of star treatment Ms Palin does on Fox News.

Ms Palin then went on to accuse President Obama of wanting to fundamentally change America. Phrases like this are thinly veiled jabs at his patriotism, his religion, and imply that his ideology is something un-American, meant to provoke doubt and fear about the man, much like Ms Palin did to her mayoral opponent in Wasilla.

Ms Palin’s unwillingness to be honest about her own record and her unfailing attempts to smear her opponents with baseless accusations of their being somehow less Christian and less American than she only serve to prove that she can’t win on ideas or her record. It also proves that she does not appreciate that the Founders most decidedly rejected the notion of a religious test for office, thereby casting further doubt onto Ms Palin’s version of America.

Does Ms Palin plan on transforming America like she did Wasilla and then Alaska? Will the AIP have an open door to a Palin White House? Will fringe hate groups like Christian Exodus have access to Ms Palin or will she denounce these groups and explain her associations to nervous melting pot Americans who most certainly don’t share the group’s vision of an all white Christian nation.

If that isn’t enough, Ms Palin’s reign of terror in Alaska should give pause to anyone who values their freedom. Ms Palin quite literally ran Wasilla like a dictator, cutting off the press and ordering her staff not to speak to press as she proceeded to fire beloved city employees claiming she doubted their loyalty to her. This continued as Governor, as the Palins terrorized Alaskan citizens who disagreed with them and went to incredible lengths to punish them, using the power of Ms Palin’s office to do so on many occasions, through appointments, firings, and governmental harassment.

One such victim was the trooper in Troopergate (contrary to Ms Palin’s claims, she was found guilty of abusing the power of her office in the bi-partisan report which predated the inquiry she ordered helmed by her appointees) who refused to help the Palins continue their vendetta against Ms Palin’s ex-brother-in-law — a vendetta that had years before been labeled as “child abuse” by a judge who ordered Ms Palin to cease and desist her harassment of the children’s father. Another example lay in the AIP’s claims that she fired someone they had a long standing grievance with, boasting about how this payback only cost them a thousand dollars in campaign donations. Another victim down.

Is this the America Ms Palin sees; an all white Christian country over which she reigns with absolute authority, authorized by none less than God himself?

When Ms Palin accuses President Obama of wanting to “fundamentally transform America” (one assumes she means implement liberal ideology which is not actually a transformation but a continuation of a very American liberal agenda), reasonable people must ask themselves if she’s projecting. And then they must take stock of what a Palin-transformed America would look like. The dingy hockey mom populist America is being sold on is not the real Sarah Palin. Ms Palin isn’t stupid; she’s been indoctrinated to a very extremist Right wing view of America.

While many dismiss Ms Palin as being un-serious, I do not. Ms Palin is deadly serious about amassing power. The real question is, to what end?

Ms Palin finally did something that may have a positive impact somewhere in the world, or at the very least, wasn’t a rage filled episode of non-nonsensical tweeting meant to start WWIII. Small things to be grateful for these days, friends. Perhaps the social democracy of Haiti rubbed off on the social Darwinist. It’s almost Christmas, so you never know.

Community organizer Sarah Palin braved exposure to the wild world of people who are not white today, when she accompanied fellow grifter (a million and some in salary to manage this charity work) Franklin Graham as he toured the area, followed by her fan club leader, Greta Van Susteren, and the Fox Propagandists TV crew.

The 2010 Haiti earthquake left 230,000 people dead and 1.6 million homeless. In October 2010, there was an outbreak of Cholera, in November Hurricane Tomas hit, flooding Haiti and then this month they suffered riots from a contested Nov. 28 presidential election. Needless to say, what the Haitians most needed was a visit from a community organizer like Sarah Palin.

We are still waiting to hear if she brought cookies (or as Samaritan’s Purse calls them, “food parcels”) like she did to the starving and freezing Native Alaskans who tried desperately to get their Governor’s attention whilst she perused the aisles of the lower 48’s Neiman Marcuses. They had only to hang on for a month before their patron saint of sacrifice returned to her state with a plate of cookies for them and prayers. Oh, the joy!

Now Palin brings this same winning combo of common sense conservatism to Haiti, where I’m sure her bump-it and Hollywood sunglasses will generate much trickle-down morale boosting, if not food, shelter, safe elections, and clean water. Even Angelina Jolie doesn’t look quite this Ricky Hollywood when she visits the less fortunate. Oh, zee glamor!

“Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press. Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.
Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, refused to discuss Palin’s itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a “security lockdown.”
Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media…
“It would be good if she came, because we could tell her that we need medicine and jobs,” said Roseline Frederique, a 21-year-old resident of the capital’s Cite Soleil slum who is being treated for cholera symptoms.”

Um, who is going to tell Roseline that Palin doesn’t believe in free medicine that comes with strings or job creation? However, we should all give great thanks to the Lord above for generating income for all of Ms Palin’s security entourage who were employed to make the Sainted One’s visit as pleasant as a visit to a Cholera clinic can be. Talk about job creation. Too bad about the Haitian press, but then Ms Palin can’t be expected to help everyone.

After arriving, the group toured a shelter community where Samaritan’s Purse has built temporary houses for people who lost everything in the earthquake.

“I’ve really enjoyed meeting this community,” Gov. Palin said. “They are so full of joy. We are so fortunate in America and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate. Samaritan’s Purse is still here doing the tough work.””

She enjoyed meeting “this community” and “they” are so full of “joy”. Shuffle shuffle Miss Daisy. Them people are always smiling and so good at basketball too. Oh, no, I kid. I kid. We’re lucky she didn’t accuse the Haitians of being limp, impotent and weak as is her wont (see Barbara Walters interview). But, bonus time, she did come bearing every socialist’s tool: a push up bra. Double points for morale boosting.

Good news is that Palin now says we are responsible for helping those less fortunate and this is a great turn around. Pretty soon she’s really gonna deserve at least a teabag’s worth of community organizing cred. It seems like just yesterday that Palin was saying they were supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like Palin did, but without the government cheese and pork because, like, healthcare for everyone was a bad thing….

Since she’s only there for a day, and has no plans to get dirty helping out with actual work, bestowing the beauty of her visage upon the deprived and desperate Haitians is all we can expect from the goddess of charity.

Nothing says Presidential like waiting a year to show up in Haiti — a year spent trying to destroy your own country’s democratically elected president no less. But no worries, Palin is in Haiti now, getting her picture taken by Fox News to sell herself in 2012 as Someone Who Has Been to Other Countries, also, too. Now, the real question is will the prolific tweeter find time to at least tweet out a call to help the Haitians, or will the miser in her overwhelm any urge of Christmas spirit, knowing as any teabagger does that there’s only so much to go around and she’s still got loads of books to sell?

There are no real solutions needed, and this isn’t about the Haitians, it’s about Sarah Palin. As always. I’m just super impressed that she actually got off the plane for her photo op. Let’s hope she left the witch doctor at home.

In an attempt to show her dashing ability to thwart off DDOS attacks, Sarah Palin told ABC News she had been the victim of a DDoS attack from Operation Payback but that she had been prepared for the “backlash” and hence warded it off. All of the above turned out to be….untrue.

When I first read Ms Palin’s email to ABC about her victimization (the only thing Ms Palin has yet to quit, it seems, is her vision of herself as Joan of Arc) at the hands of the Evil Wikileaks people (whom she called to be treated like the traitors she thinks they are, even though they aren’t American citizens), I shook my head in pity for poor Jake Tapper.

One day, these folks will learn not to simply publish everything Ms Palin tells them without doing cursory diligence of their own. For Ms Palin has an allergy to the truth, whether lying about the weather or about being found guilty of violating the ethics laws in Alaska, when Ms Palin speaks, one must fact-check every word lest one trip on the banana peels of false narratives Ms Palin litters the political landscape with.

“Hackers in London that the Palin team believe to be affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts, SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour said.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed ABC News. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

A SarahPAC.com technical aide said that the “DOS attackers, a group loosely known as Anon_Ops, used a tool called LOIC (Lower Orbit Ion Cannon) to flood sarahpac.com. The attackers wanted us to know that they were affiliated with wikileaks.org through an obscure message in our server log file.”….

Added Mansour, “the governor voiced her opinion knowing full well that she was speaking out against a shady disreputable organization with no regard for laws or human life. This is how they operate. The world should not be intimidated by them.”

Mansour added that Wikileaks supporters claim to be “in favor of free speech yet they attack Sarah Palin for exercising her free speech.” She said SarahPAC.com was not harmed because Palin’s staff was able to move quickly to protect the site.”

So Ms Palin managed to do what MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Wikileaks couldn’t. This is the sort of lore best swallowed with KookAid. And what jumps out at the person who’s been paying attention to the way Ms Palin’s mind works is that she is the heroine of this story. Ms Palin’s the only person who called out Assange, anticipated his counter-attack and warded it off! My goodness. Those are some cojones.

I’ll not even address the credit card claims ( she claimed her credit card number was released and it wasn’t) or the hubristically blind nattering on about freedom of speech from a supposed communications major who fails to understand important rulings such as the Pentagon Papers. In Ms Palin’s world, the only person who has freedom of speech is her and she’s quite certain that anyone who doesn’t agree with her is violating her freedoms. This notion is troubling to anyone who loves America and comprehends our country’s core principles.

The problem I had with her statement is that PoliticusUSA has been DDoS attacked and so I know a bit about it. We were told that this attack might kill our site for good. It was a very unpleasant and sobering experience (coincidentally, our website was brought down in a coordinated attack after an article I wrote about Ms Palin and her actions of stoking violence in Alaska). A DDoS attack bears little resemblance to being hacked, and yet Ms Palin’s story reads more like a five minute attempted hacking than a DDoS attack.

For example, one doesn’t know immediately that they are under DDoS attack and neither does their server host, because it appears to be a flood of traffic. The pattern becomes clear over time, however, as a denial of service attack lasts for weeks and months, as it is meant to shut down a site all together.

So as Ms Palin was nattering on in her email to ABC about her freedom of speech being attacked, my Palin hackles were immediately raised.

See, Ms Palin is rather infamous for her projections. Whatever she accuses others of doing is what she has or will do herself. From death panels to accusing the President of not loving his country, Ms Palin suffers from a painfully obvious inability to deal with her own transgressions without projecting them onto others.

And I suspected this latest Palin Myth with its dashing heroine didn’t come from her imagination, it came from her need to project onto others her own modus operandi. Because you see, the story Ms Palin fed to ABC has already been debunked. The group of activist hackers admitted targeting MasterCard.com, PostFinace, Visa, Paypal.com, and others but deny ever targeting Sarah Palin.

“A group who refers to itself as Anonymous has as taken credit for a recent string of high-profile cyber attacks against the websites of businesses, banks and politicians that have either spoken out against or stopped doing business with WikiLeaks.

Cyber attacks, dubbed Operation Payback, targets those who have caved into US government pressure to shun the whistleblower website that recently released thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.

“We have been DDoS’ing sites,” he explained. “We have been flooding them with traffic so other people cannot use them and they have been taken down like this and they cannot operate like this anymore. We’ve been attacking them, we’ve been DDoS’ing them so people can’t buy things, people can’t make transactions.”..

Although the media had reported the group planned coordinated attacks on Amazon.com, the groups representative said they do not have any malicious plans to take on Amazon nor had they attempted to. He also said the group was not responsible for any coordinated attacks or hacks on Sarah Palin, although she claims to have been a target…

“We don’t really care about Sarah Palin that much, to be honest. I don’t really know what she’s trying to accomplish or what attention she is trying to gain. We personally don’t care about Sarah Palin,” he added.

Yes, see, they don’t even care about Ms Palin. And why would they? She is no one. She has no power to harm Assange or Wikileaks, in spite of her own refusal to comprehend American laws, borders and most significantly, freedom of the press.

Not only did Ms Palin and her sidekick Rebecca Mansour call a DDoS attack a DOS attack (usually a much less sophisticated attack, but no matter as Operation Payback admits to perpetrating DDoS attacks, not DOS attacks), but also they obviously have never experienced a real one and sadly, Ms Mansour lacks the skills one would have thought a wannabe screenwriter would have at least cursory knowledge of (before you write a fictional account of a dramatic experience, interview someone who has gone through it). Steeped in their ignorance of the real thing, Ms Mansour and Ms Palin obviously thought a DDoS attack was like hacking and that like the Jedi Warrior she is, Ms Palin could step in with her frontier gal spirit and stop a DDoS attack with her feisty sayings and a few nasty kicks to the “gutless” “anonymous” terrorists taking away her freedom thereby showing us all what a great President she’d be.

Credit is due for a great story premise and one that would have perpetuated the Palin myth nicely, except that anyone who’s been through a DDoS attack knows better. Ask Julian Assage. The fight isn’t over in five minutes. And Ms Palin made a fatal mistake when she asked thinking people to accept that she knows more about keeping her SarahPAC site online than Julian Assange does about keeping Wikileaks online (Wikileaks has been suffering under DDoS attack since revealing the cables dump). Nope. Warrior Princesses can’t stop DDoS attacks, just like they can’t stop pesky citizens from asking questions about their illegal trust funds or stop citizens from writing about their calls for violence.

Ms Palin is obviously exceptionally deluded into believing that she can sell these lies to anyone and we will all believe her. The failure of our media in fact-checking Ms Palin has only allowed her belief in her ability to sell us whatever she wants us to believe to grow into now monstrous proportions, and this is only adding to her brazen willingness to play chicken with the truth. Ms Palin’s real enemy here is her own ego and her inability to see reality as it really is. Her latest foray into fiction should be enough to convince American journalists that she is not well. No sane person would be so paranoid as to believe they were under attack when they weren’t nor would they believe they could manufacture this utter fiction to ABC, no less, and get away with it.

But what is even more interesting is that in the wake of this humiliating exposure of her allergy to truth and shoot-first mentality, Ms Palin will show no shame. And that is what I find most disconcerting. Shame, after all, is the mechanism we use to moderate behavior and keep some semblance of humanity ruling. Shame fills in the gaps between our laws; it’s a form of punishment for bad behavior in Western societies.

Shame reflects a decrease in our stature while pride is the emotion that is supposed to reflect an increase in stature. Perhaps Ms Palin’s lack of shame indicates something troubling about her own standards regarding the truth.

Ms Palin has enough pride to fill the galaxy, but it’s built upon self-aggrandized, mythical, fictional accounts of herself that have no bearing to reality. From claims to being a huntress to claims of fiscal conservatism to claims of being a reformer to claims of hating pork, Sarah Palin is a self-produced legend in her own mind.

Self-respecting journalists had best take Jake Tapper’s hard learned lesson to heart. When reporting on Ms Palin, if she tells you the sky is blue where she is today, you would be well served to double check. For Palin, if it makes a good story and dramatizes her into an all-American heroine, she’ll say it. She’s as reckless with the truth as she is with calls for war. And that’s pretty darn reckless. This is the person the GOP is selling as their best and brightest for 2012. Shoot first, ask questions later, and truth be damned.

Sarah Palin’s folksy outdoor image has taken a hit in light of her obvious shortcomings as a modern-day Jim Bridger, ironically while exercising her Second Amendment rights. It’s one thing to lie to the Lower 48 about being a wilderness scout in larger-than-life Alaska, but when you put it on TV for everyone to see, the mystique wears off pretty quickly.

People aren’t complete idiots, even people naturally disposed to like Sarah Palin – like hunters and conservatives.

And that’s just what Sarah Palin did. The former governor of Alaska brought a TV crew on weekend-long trip to the Arctic tundra to do some shooting for her Sarah Palin’s Alaska show on TLC (The Learning Channel) and her shortcomings became evident immediately. Among her errors:

She shot 4-5 times at a wandering caribou and missed

When she shot the first time and missed, she panicked and shot at it as it moved, apparently thinking it would be easier to hit that way than when standing still

She took no practice shots

She didn’t check the sites (they were off)

She didn’t carry her own rifle; she let her father and his friend carry it for her (her father is 72-years-old to Palin’s sprightly 46)

She let her father load the rifle

When the rifle was passed to her, MamaGrizzly “moved her finger inside its trigger guard, a breach of basic safety rules” as one website noted

“On leaving her hunting camp one morning, Ms Palin pointed to the horizon and declared ‘Let’s go west.’ There followed an awkward pause. “That’s east,” noted her father.”

She was under-armed (her father called her weapon a “varmint rifle” yet she expressed concern that it might have a kick)

The problem for Sarah Palin fans is how to reconcile her obvious phoniness with her claims. Republicans have shown a breath-taking ability to put facts aside for the sake of ideology, “what should be” for “what is” but can they do it when it’s blaring in their faces on their big screen HD TVs?

The reaction from liberals has been more predictable. Aaron Sorkin, who created West Wing, told Huffington Post that she had made a “snuff film” and called her a “phony Pioneer girl” and a “witless bully.” Animal rights groups and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have also complained.

At least she used Facebook rather than treating the English language the way she treated that caribou on Twitter.

That’s scant justification for putting herself, her crew, her father and his friend, and the animals she is shooting at in danger through inept handling of firearms. There are reasons people take lessons in handling those things, Wannabe Huntress-in-Chief.

Sorkin’s response was typically witty and scathingly to the point:

I don’t think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I’m in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God’s country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)

Palin isn’t likely to care what Hollywood thinks, or what leftist elites like PETA think, but she should care about what her supporters and potential supporters think, and she’s just misfired on that front. Imagine hiring a guide to take you over the Rockies only to discover he’d never been out of the city himself? That’s what Republicans are doing when they put their trust in a savvy-common sense politicians only to discover that she’s simply a self-promoting grifter who has no idea what she’s talking about.

She’d be a fish out of water in the White House, as out of water as she has been hunting and fishing on her self-promotional TV show. She’s a fake and a phony and it has never been more obvious. Take note, America, especially you Republicans.

Sarah Palin has made it to the big time; she’s now being called out by international media. Yesterday, the Russian newspaper Pravda (this same paper has been quoted in numerous Right Wing publications when it criticized President Obama, and was considered a paper of merit at such time) eviscerated Sarah Palin for her unrelenting attacks upon the democratically elected President, at a time when America needs to stand together, united. When members of the International Press call Sarah Palin out for her lack of American patriotism, it’s time for the American Press to pay attention. It’s about time someone did.

“By attacking the democratically elected President of the United States of America at a sensitive time in her country’s history, she shows the tact of a boorish drunkard bawling obscenities at a funeral….

And now she turns not only against the fibre and backbone of her country, but against its democratically elected President, accusing him of being incompetent for not stopping Wikileaks. Where was she and where was her GOP before and during the 9/11 attacks? She accuses President Obama of not taking “steps” to assure the leaks were not published. What “steps”?……

If anything is a threat to the national security of the United States of America, it is this screaming, unrefined oaf with as much class as a searing release of flatulence followed by hysterical giggling at a state banquet. Is this what the people of the USA deserve?

To attack the President of the country at a time when the USA needs to close ranks and stand together to consolidate the enormous strides his (President Obama’s) intelligent and respectful approach has achieved in building bridges, when her party’s period in government bombed them, Spankin’ Sarah Palin comes across as a pitifully inadequate anachronism from the times of the Far West.”

The American Press won’t say what the International Press will for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that there are many agendas at play here, causing truth to take a back-seat to dollars. As a noted US media critic once said, “everything to sell and nothing to tell.” And what a shame, because this isn’t about partisanship or even elitism; it’s about patriotism and who better to cover this issue than our domestic press?

Ms Palin cloaks her myth in her flag, but one has to question just what that symbol represents to Ms Palin, given that she won’t stop attacking this country’s sitting President during each crisis that presents itself. The word patriotism derives from the Greek patriōtēs meaning “fellow countryman”; that would include all of us, even President Obama. I’m afraid Ms Palin and her followers conflate their false community of nationalism with patriotism, and under the guise of said nationalism, justify harming America’s standing in the world along with the very unity of our nation. One can’t help but question Ms Palin’s true motives, along with her jingoistic, tabloid-driven patriotism, since she beats this drum of division in each public appearance she makes.

One wonders, can Sarah Palin can see what the Russians see: a shrill, desperate demagogue more interested in making money and getting famous than in the best interests of her country; a woman so jealous of a sitting President that she takes every blow her country faces and exploits it, turning it into an even more negative, frightening moment while distracting from the real work – never once stepping into the debate to lead, to soothe, to unite.

Never once has Ms Palin shown her love for this great country by standing by it and her President in a time of need. Instead, she views each crisis as a cynical opportunity to sow the seeds of division among fellow countrymen. During the oil spill crisis, she took to Fox News to spew nonsense about the Dutch not getting their phone calls received, claiming she knew how to fix the leak if only the President had called on her. Of course, since she was on Fox News, no one bothered to ask her why, then, she did nothing to stop the oil spills that took place during her brief tenure as Governor of Alaska.

Ms Palin and her followers justify this unpatriotic behavior by claiming the President is “un-American”. We all know what that’s about but if we’re left with any doubt, we have only to listen to Ms Palin assure her listeners that they have every right to ask for the President’s birth certificate:

Ms Palin’s heavily moderated Facebook page was just months ago full of comments calling for the death of our President, sedition, and the overthrowing of the Obama administration as being God’s will. Those comments were left standing while comments questioning Ms Palin in any way were scrubbed. Ms Palin stands for a level of vitriolic, simmering revulsion so steeped in delusions of self-righteousness, it’s tough to swim to sanity once you’ve been washed in the blood of her particular lamb.

We are at war, facing a global economic crisis, still reeling from a devastating oil spill and now facing the challenges brought on by the WikiLeaks dump. Yet, on every issue of importance, Palin has inserted herself with jarring accusations against the President, offering nothing but malicious hate fueled by a failure to understand what she doesn’t understand.

Ms Palin’s particular brand of tabloid patriotism leaves out anyone who disagrees with her, beats her in a contest, dares to question her, or has the temerity to actually read and debate important issues. She’s become an international embarrassment:
“If Sarah Palin is not some kind of a massive political joke in the USA, wheeled out to liven up the political scene from time to time with nonsensical and pastiche (one hopes) displays of sheer and utter ignorance, then it is worrying.”

Sarah Palin is the figurehead for an unpatriotic movement here in the United States of America. A movement so bereft of love for this country that they would go to any means to see it fail, in order to elevate themselves into power. A movement which just yesterday met with the democratically elected President of this fine country and then immediately stabbed him in the back in their post-game press conference.

And nestled into this web of traitors is one particularly odious senator, Senator John McCain, upon whose shoulders the blame for this national embarrassment rests. Ms Palin is the front-runner of this group for Presidential candidate in 2012 according to polls. This makes sense, given the Republican Party’s current gamesmanship of our political system, wherein their only goal is to destroy the President – not to lead, not to govern – but to destroy. At any cost necessary.

When the Russians are calling you out for failing to support your country in a time of need, for attempting to bring her to her knees with petty attacks on the President, you have seriously jumped the patriotism shark. Sarah Palin is the traitorous figurehead of the GOP, whose only purpose seems to be to assist them in their goal to bring down President Barack Obama.

So while a scant few of them (Rove, Scarborough, and a few of the “elites” who are not elected officials; the elected officials are quivering in the corner rather than standing up to the myth of Palin lest they alienate what little remains of the Republican Party base) make the rounds distancing themselves from her now, do not forget how they set her into motion in 2008 to do exactly what she’s doing now. And do not forget that even as they take a slight step away from the noxious whiff of disgust that follows in Ms Palin’s wake, they’re not silencing her; they’re not calling her out for her attacks on the President. No, the most they can muster from their cowardly bunkers of fear from which they wage their war on America is mild outrage that she would insult the Bushes or Reagan.

Nary a word about her outrageously destructive actions toward our current President. And why is that? Because Ms Palin is doing the dirty work for the Republican weaklings; sowing seeds of division, suspicion, hatred, and rage against a sitting President.

And those, my friends, are not the actions of a patriot. True Glasnost has arrived when the International Press says what the American Press will not. Sarah Palin is no patriot.